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Verizon CEO Calls Municipal Wi-Fi 'a Dumb Idea'
ozone writes "
An interview with Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg quotes him as saying that 'Municipal Wi-Fi is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard' and 'Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?' -- apparently Verizon's own 'Can You Hear Me Now' ad campaign has given customers 'unrealistic expectations' that their phone service will work everywhere. What?"
"Can you ping me now? No? Good!"
CEO of company that would lose customers is city wifi is deployed makes argument against wi-fi.
More at news 11....
...buggy whip manufacturers call automobiles "a passing fad".
"The customer has come to expect so much."
That is unbelievable. Customer expectations are profit opportunities -- and if he's not willing to satisfy them, someone else will. He's actually angry that customers want service to keep improving!
"They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."
If Verizon won't provide the technology to make that happen, someone will.
How did he get so far? He reminds me of someone who'd say "I wish those customers would stop calling!"
Then again, when you're the CEO of a company that has a monopoly in most of its markets, I guess you can tell customers to f--- off with impunity.
San Francisco isn't big. Did you even bother to check the square miles covered by the city/county proper? Do you even know what SF's plan is when related to coverage areas?
Oh, that would be no to both.
For those who aren't familiar unlike many cities in the USA, SF is a very compact, small place because there simply is no way for it to sprawl as it is surrounded by water on three sides.
--- I do not moderate.
Actually, San Francisco is a perfect place for city-wide WiFi. SF is a rather small (physically) city compared to the population. Such a dense city is a perfect spot to give full-coverage cheap WiFi internet access, because you get so many people covered per square mile. Plus, him saying that it's a bad idea, simply because it takes work to make it happen is kind of ridiculous. "Slashdot is a bad idea, because someone has to design it, someone has to upgrade it, someone has to maintain, and someone has to run it." "A city-wide fire department coverage is a bad idea, because someone has to design it, someone has to upgrade it, someone has to maintain it, and someone has to run it." We're moving into an age where the internet is increasingly important, and access to it for everyone is going to end up needing to be present. One more thing. If he says that companies like Verizon are better suited to it, then why don't they start doing it? That's the whole problem is that they haven't. "Don't bother offering low-income children free public education, private companies like ours would be better at it."
He say 1 and 1 and 1 is 3, got to be good lookin' cause hes so hard to see...
'640K ought to be enough for anybody' -- Bill Gates
'We think there is a world market for maybe five computers.' --Tom Watson
'Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?' --Samuel Goldwyn
'Municipal Wi-Fi is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard' -- Ivan Seidenberg
Unknown host pong.
The word the parent is looking for is, I believe, oligopoly, defined by dictionary.com as "A market condition in which sellers are so few that the actions of any one of them will materially affect price and have a measurable impact on competitors." You can also look it up on Wikipedia if you care to.
While not as bad as monopoly, it's still a problem, at least if you are a consumer. Voting with your wallet in an oligopoly is not very effective, as the choices are all practically the same.
Monopolies and oligopolies are really capitalism gone wrong. While capitalism is the best system, it needs a firm framework, otherwise you end up with a handful of companies running the show. In that situation they care little about the customers, but focus instead on the CEO's compensation. At the same time they are entrenched, rich and powerful enough to keep out any newcomers, thus maintaining the status quo. This is especially true where the threshold to play is very high, such as in the phone business, excluding voip.
<sarcasm>Finally, I knew there was a reason that annoying Verizon guy in the ads is never shown inside people's houses, of course you shouldn't imagine you could cancel your landline and simply use a cell. Everyone knows cell phones don't work inside private residences.</sarcasm>
A furore Normanorum libera nos, O Domine! [From the fury of the norsemen deliver us, O Lord!] -- Medieval prayer
But private telephone companies aren't doing it. Governments and enthusiastic hoppyists are. Private restaurants and bookstores are. Private phone companies are trying to get individuals to pay through the nose by the megabyte for 4G services and selling them data-enabled phones that they can't access their preferred data services from.
I have a Verizon phone. It's more powerful than my PDA, but I can't run any of my own software on it... in fact I can't run ANY software on it, except by paying exorbitant rates to Verizon for "Buy It Now". Verizon has a cash cow in their captive customer base, and they don't just milk it... they bleed it. Is it any wonder people don't see them as the natural providers of high speed data services, services... I note again... they they're not even providing.
"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" he said. "The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."
You're selling me a telephone, and you tell me it's good enough to replace my landline. Why shouldn't I take you at your word?
AT least your coverage is better than T-Mobile. T-Mobile I had to walk to the other side of my street to get a signal. Hell with "in my house" how about "in my back yard"?
Last year, the California Public Utilities Commission ordered all phone companies to give customers 30 days to test a service without slapping them with hundreds of dollars in early cancellation fees.
A few years ago I had a nice PDA-phone combo. I went to the phone companies that were compatible with it, and tried to get it activated with the pre-paid card they were selling.I didn't get far enough to find out about "early cancellation fees".
Open your books, mister Seidenberg, quit treating your customers as criminals and fools, and then maybe people will quit turning to government because the free enterprise system has failed them... because the cellphone market doesn't resemble anything so much as a parody of a soviet health-care program. Homeopathic levels of service and no accountability...
"If Municipal WiFi is adopted the Terrorists Win." - Verizon CEO
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